"Ordinary Glory": Matthew 25:31-46
Christ the King Sunday
31 “When the Son of Man
comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his
glorious throne. 32 Before him will be
gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from
another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 And
he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. 34 Then the
King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my
Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the
foundation of the world. 35 For I was hungry
and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a
stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and
you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison
and you came to me.’ 37 Then the righteous will
answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty
and give you drink? 38 And when did we see you a
stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 39 And
when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ 40 And the
King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you
did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’
41 “Then he will say to
those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal
fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I
was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no
drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome
me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit
me.’ 44 Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger
or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ 45 Then
he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one
of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ 46 And
these will go away into eternal punishment, but the
righteous into eternal life.”
(ESV)
In the years
between World War I and World War II, the educator, children’s author, and
physician Janusz Korczak—called by some “the Mr. Rogers
of Polish radio”[1]—ran
an orphanage. In 1940, the Germans created
the Warsaw ghetto and forced the orphanage to relocate. Even though Korczak—himself Jewish—was
offered shelter by his Gentile friends outside of the ghetto, he said
repeatedly that he would not leave his orphans.
Over the next two years, he advocated for the children to have food,
clothing, education, and dignity. In
1942, he went with his orphans—all 200 of them—on the train to the gas chambers
at Treblinka.[2]
“Lord,
when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?”
In the
summer of 2018, public opinion erupted after reports of the Department of
Homeland Security separating children from their parents seeking asylum
crossing the Mexican border hit major news broadcasts. In April 2019, Homeland Security chief Kirstjen
Nielsen was forced out of the job after refusing to reinstate the so-called
“zero tolerance” policy of separation that had been blocked by several courts.[3] Just before her resignation, National Public
Radio reported that the Office of Refugee Resettlement was under review for
thousands of claims of sexual and physical abuse of migrant children at the
southern border during the Obama and Trump presidencies.[4]
“Lord,
when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in
prison, and did not minister to you?”
“When
the Son of Man comes in his glory,” our text today begins. It is Christ the King Sunday, also known as
Reign of Christ Sunday. It is the last
Sunday of the Church’s liturgical year, the sacred calendar of observances that
marks our awareness of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. Just as we often throw a large celebration on
New Year’s Eve to observe the end of the chronological year, this day is a
festival, a feast day, a day for recognizing the God Who has not left us during
the preceding seasons and Who promises to walk with us into the new ones. We of the 21st century may not
find the image of God as king altogether welcoming—after all, those of us in
the United States have inherited quite a distrust of kings—but the idea that
there is a God Who is keeping an eye on the world and Who has final authority
over all things, even the things that seem to be crushing us in this moment,
can be a source of comfort. Our
Christian history teaches us to consider the ways in which God as King grounds
us in the reality of One Who is not overcome by the things that overwhelm us. So the Church calendar remembers and rejoices
in another year of God’s presence, of God’s majesty. The Church year will begin anew with the
season of Advent, of waiting—but for now, the Church celebrates.
The
glimpse of judgment we get in this scene from Matthew may not seem like much of
a celebration—in fact, it’s often used to terrify people into some kind of
“right” living because no one wants to end up the goat. But it is much more than a scare tactic, this
story—it is an encouragement, a call to action, an invitation to wholeness, a glimpse
of the Kingdom; oddly, a celebration.
The
scene is set by Jesus as He answers the disciples’ question about how they will
recognize the end of the age.[5] The division of sheep and goats is the third
in a series of illustrative parables Jesus unwinds in answer to the disciples’
curiosity about what comes next. In
deliberate repetition, Jesus tells His disciples about bridesmaids, talents, and
an everlasting separation. Want to know
what the end of the age will look like?
It will be sheep and goats.
This is
not to say that goats are inherently evil, despite how annoying they may be at
the petting zoo when they eat your coat button.
It is, rather, a metaphor within a metaphor; the Son of Man on His
throne is like a shepherd, separating sheep from goats.
The
shepherd language of God is well-known, both to Jesus’ disciples then and to us
now. Psalm 23 may be one of the
best-known examples—“the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” And a shepherd works with sheep—the job title
is, after all, “sheep herd.” Shepherds
don’t work with goats; that’s not their task.
So when the Son of Man on His throne separates sheep and goats, it is a
moment of taking up one’s own. The
shepherd is looking for sheep, not goats.
Goats are not his concern, not his obligation, and the people who are
called goats are not those who are welcome into this shepherd’s fold because
they are, in some fundamental way, not his flock. They are not sheep for whom the shepherd has
charge.
So Jesus
uses His layered metaphors to answer a question about the change that is coming
and we who stand at the edge of a new Church year do well to realize that this
whole conversation happens just before Matthew’s telling of the Passion, the narrative
of Jesus’ betrayal, trial, and crucifixion.
“But
that’s Holy Week—that’s for March, not November!” you may well say, and yes,
that is when the Church wheels through the events leading up to Easter and the
Resurrection. But this moment is just before;
this conversation is a chapter ahead, a last moment of Jesus trying to tell His
disciples to stop looking for a billboard with the instructions painted on it
and start looking at the Kingdom already among them. This is a moment of standing on the edge of
something new, something that will come in an unexpected way after some grief,
some anger, some darkness, some waiting.
Rather
like Advent, really.
“Lord,
when did we see You?”
This
passage gets used for different ends but with similar amounts of vehemence by
different sections of Christianity. For
the doctrinally minded, this is often a cornerstone text for talking about Hell
and right living and the need to be saved from sin and death. For those privileging social justice, this is
a blueprint of how to live in a way that is pleasing to God, calling all to care
for the least of these in physical, tangible ways. Both have merit and both have demerit when
they are used to bully others into a certain kind of faith. Scripture should never be a weapon, though it
all too often is in our history and our current religious discourses. If you encounter a text like this being used
to shame someone, to make them feel less valuable as a person, leave the
conversation. It’s no longer about Christ.
While the
two groups of people here represented by sheep and goats seem to be polar
opposites of each other, there is a key similarity—no one knew their
actions were part of their relationship with the King. And the King, for His part, is not acting all
that kingly in the sense we usually mean.
In these examples, the King is not the one giving out mercy and food and
clothing and kindness, as we might expect.
Nor is He the one withholding mercy and food and clothing and kindness,
as we might think of some kings. He is
the recipient; He is the naked, and hungry, and imprisoned. He is all the people who couldn’t be further
from our human understanding of royalty if they tried.
“What
will the end of things, the coming of the reign of God be like?” the disciples
asked Jesus, and He responds with this tale of topsy-turvy expectations. It will be like a king who is cared for by
normal people who don’t know his status; it will be like normal people who are
not expecting some goodness tally to recognize how many times they’ve helped
someone else; it will be like humility that wraps itself into the type of love
that manifests as kindness.
David Lose writes it like this: “Notice that both those identified as sheep and those named goats are surprised by what Jesus says. ‘Lord, when did we…’ and ‘when didn’t we…’ both capture the shock each group expresses when Jesus commends or condemns their behavior. But what exactly are they surprised by? That they acted either in a righteous way by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, and visiting the imprisoned or, on the other hand, in an unrighteous way by neglecting to do the same? Interestingly, no. Neither group denies their behavior. Rather, they are surprised by their failure to recognize the Son of Man. Or, more to the point, they are surprised by where the Son of Man hangs out.… And this seems to me like surprisingly good news: that God is with us, here and now, revealed in the fellowship of broken people we call church, made manifest in the ordinary elements of bread and wine, and available to us in the seemingly small gestures of mercy we offer and are offered each and every day. It may not be where we expect God to show up, but it is just where we need God to be.”[6]
It is
easy to tell ourselves that we need to be Janusz Korczak, or to tell others
that they need to avoid being the DHS.
It is easy to tell ourselves that we would recognize the King in beggars’
clothing. But it is never that
easy. It is complicated, this living
faith thing, and what this story of sheep and goats tells us is that
complicated is okay because we keep getting more chances. Both groups here are told of multiple
examples, multiple moments of them reacting to the people around them. The sheep are the ones who over and over said
yes, I see you, I care for you, I will show compassion to you, I will value you
as a fellow human being. The goats are
the ones who said over and over no, I will ignore you, I think you are less
than human, I have found all these reasons to walk around your need. Neither is a one-and-done test.
The life
of faith is just that—a life. It isn’t a
single choice but a layered grid of developments as we grow into the people God
calls us to be, as we learn the pathways of this Kingdom in our midst that
doesn’t look anything like what we were expecting. We stand here on the last Sunday of this
church year in a calendar year that has thrown all of our plans to the wind and
asked us to look even to this next season with new arrangements for what
Thanksgiving will look like, how Advent will go, what Christmas will be. We are about to enter the season of waiting
and we may well be sick of waiting—we’ve had months of it, after all.
“When
you did it for the least of these,” the King says to the startled people who were
simply living their lives. When you wore
a mask to protect another, when you tipped a delivery driver, when you called a
lonely friend, when you wrote a letter to an inmate, when you donated a coat to
the clothes drive, when you used a trans person’s right name, when you spoke
Scripture in love rather than condemnation, when you listened to the pleas of
doctors and nurses to stay home and stay safe so they can do their jobs without
being overwhelmed, when you loved one another, truly I say to you, you did it
to Me.
May we
live as though the King is found in all people—including ourselves. May we learn the strength of kindness. And may we enter this new year in the wonder
of knowing that God goes with us, every Sunday and every day else. Amen.
[1]
Berenbaum, Michael. The World Must
Know, 2nd ed., 76.
[2]
https://www.yadvashem.org/education/educational-materials/learning-environment/janusz-korczak/korczak-bio.html
[3]
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/acting-dhs-chief-family-separations-not-worth-it-enforcement-perspective-n997626
[4]
https://www.npr.org/2019/02/26/698397631/sexual-assault-of-detained-migrant-children-reported-in-the-thousands-since-2015
[5]
Mt 24:3
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